Hey Pretty Girl
by Aquadart13
Summary: The attendings and residents of Seattle Grace Mercy West thought that Grey, Yang, Karev, Stevens, and O'Malley were the wildest interns they've ever seen. What happens when another batch of brilliant interns take the hospital by storm?
1. Chapter One

I couldn't start my morning without coffee.

"One large vanilla latte, no whip, please," I ordered.

"Coming right up," said the barista at the coffee cart in the lobby of Seattle Grace Mercy West with a smile.

I took a deep breath as I took out my staff ID- doctors got discounts. I felt indescribable glee and panic at that, officially being a doctor. Med school at Johns Hopkins had been the furthest thing from easy, but I had made it. Top of my class, too. Now I was a doctor… and weirdly, for the first time in my life, I felt like an actual adult. Here I was, thousands of miles from my family back home on the east coast, reporting for an internship at one of the best hospitals in the country.

"Don't think I've seen you around here," the barista said casually as she put the lid on the Styrofoam coffee cup. "You new?"

"Yeah, surgical intern, it's my first day," I admitted sheepishly. "My name's Ally Tate."

"Dr. Tate, nice to meet you, I'm Felicia Stewart."

"Ally is fine," I said, slightly embarrassed.

Felicia shook her head and laughed. "Eight years of post-high school education, you earned that title. And since it's your first day, this is on the house. Take a muffin or something too."

Felicia waved away my money and practically threatened to call security if I didn't take the coffee and a doughnut and leave. After thanking her profusely, I headed to the intern's lockerroom.

It was a cramped room with as many lockers as space allowed. A door at the far end led to toilets and showers. I found the locker with a duct tape strip labeling it 'A. Tate'. Inside was three pairs of light blue scrubs, a white lab coat, and a light blue surgical cap. After changing and clipping my ID to my scrubs, I started listening to the conversations around me.

"Anyone else's resident Dr. Lexie Grey?" A strong-looking girl with brown hair and bright blue eyes asked.

I grinned. "Me," I said.

She gave me the once over and smirked. "What did the blonde say to the police officer when he pulled her over?"

I knew this was in reference to my dark blonde hair. With a snarky grin I replied, "Officer, I confess, I killed the brunette."

The woman laughed hard. When she could breathe, she said, "I'm Raegan Ellison, Princeton."

"Ally Tate, Johns Hopkins."

"Nice to meet you. So you're with Grey, too?"

"That's right."

"Tate, Ellison, Eckerton, Ridge, with me!" A tall brunette woman, also in light blue scrubs, half-yelled, half-stuttered. It was like she was trying- and failing- to be tough. She seemed excited and nice enough.

Raegan, me, and two boys walked forwards and followed her as she walked out the door. We paused outside the nurses' station. "I have five rules. Memorize them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up, I already hate you. That's not going to change. "

The bright smiles fell off of all four of our faces.

"Trauma protocol, phone lists, pagers."

My fellow interns and I all quickly snatched up the pager with our name on it and a little booklet that had the trauma protocol and the phone numbers in it. I started to glance through it, but Lexie started to talk again and she was walking away, so we all hustled to keep up.

"Nurses will page you. You answer every page at a run. A run, that's rule 2. Your first shift starts now and last 48 hours. You're interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain. Run labs, write orders, work every second and night until you drop and don't complain." She threw open a door at the end of the hall. "On call rooms, attendings hog them; sleep when you can, where you can. Which brings me to rule 3: If I'm sleeping don't wake me unless your patient is actually dying. Rule 4: The dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only would you have killed someone, you would have waked me for no good reason. Are we clear?"

We all nodded. She didn't look impressed.

"What, did they give me the mute idiots? I said five rules, that was only four."

Right then, all of our pages started going off. She yelled, "Rule 5: When I move, you move."

We were off then, running past doctors and nurses and gurneys, down three flights of stairs, and finally bursting through the double doors leading to The Pit, or the Emergency Room.

"I've got what looks like a four-year-old female, found bleeding in the streets. It appears she's been there for a few hours," called a nurse as Lexie and the four of us interns threw on gowns and gloves."She's about three minutes out."

Lexie immediately started barking out orders, and she sounded more impressive now than when she was bullying us. "Eckerton, Page Dr. Robbins, now, then call child services, tell them we need someone here. Ridge, Ellison damage control, Tate, run the portable x-ray." The sirens started getting louder. With something like pity on her face, she turned to us. "This is going to be hard to look at. Hurt kids always are. But remember, freaking out will only make it worse. Odds are, this is a case of child abuse."

My stomach dropped through my butt. With a determined nod, I told myself, "Let's do this."

Lexie looked at me and gave a small smile. I hadn't realized I'd said it out loud.

The ambulance pulled into the bay, and before the vehicle even stopped, paramedics jumped out and started rattling off her vitals- which were terrible, I didn't know how this girl was still alive- and how she was found. "We got a call, little girl bleeding with what looked like her arm almost hacked off, she's lost a lot of blood, we've started her on some O-neg, but she's losing it fast, I don't know how she didn't bleed out. We gave her some morphine, but I don't know how she kept so quiet, the wound looked to be several hours old. She would have had to been in serious pain." He and his partner got the gurney out of the ambulence and I nearly puked at the sight that awaited me.

The girl couldn't have been older than four years old. Her blonde hair was stuck to her face because of dried blood, which came from a cut over her forehead and- this drew eyes like a dead body- her left arm hanging on by a thread of skin and muscle. I stumbled forward as she started to scream- she had to have been in terrible pain already, and had already been crying, but the jolting of the gurney as they brought her into the ER must have been too much. I grabbed her good right hand she looked at me and started screaming, if possible, even louder, but she squeezed my hand.

"Hey, hey, hey, My name is Dr. Tate, I'm going to help you feel better, alright?" I said confidently, giving her the biggest smile I could manage. She nodded and squeezed my hand so hard I nearly gasped in pain. For such a small child, she was strong. I had to let go of her hand as we scanned her body with the amazing emergency scanner Chief of Surgery Owen Hunt had gotten (this one thing secured Seattle Grace Mercy West as a Level One Trauma Center), but she grabbed my hand as soon as I came near her.

"Page Torres and Shepherd, book an OR, we need to get there now!" Came Arizona Robbins' voice. Lexie, you stay. Get someone to babysit your interns!"

Lexie nodded. "Okay, guys, go with Miranda Bailey or Meredith Grey, get someone to page them_"

As I let go of the little girl's hand, she screamed louder. "Dr. Tate, don't leave!" she said, and she began sobbing, if possible, even harder.

Dr. Robbins sighed. "Okay, fine, baby surgeon_"

"Dr. Tate," Lexie inserted quickly.

"_ you can stay, but stay out of our way while we're saving her life!"

Dr. Robbins, Dr. Lexie Grey and I rushed towards the elevators, and as we wheeled the gurney out onto the OR floor, a man with amazingly styled brown hair and a Spanish beauty met up with us... must be Shepherd and Torres, no clue which one was which.

"Shepherd, girl has a head injury, looks like blunt force trauma... Callie, what's our best option for this arm?"

"Amputation would be easiest..." Torres muttered as we came to a halt outside the OR. They had to scrub in, but a nurse tied a surgical cap around my head and re-gloved my free hand.

"Easiest, or giving this patient the best quality of life?" I asked, temporarily forgetting my place. "She's young, she can relearn how to use her arm! If it can be salvaged, even the slightest chance..." The attendings all looked at me, and I looked down at my feet. "I'm sorry, that was out of line."

"Yeah, that was. Who's the baby surgeon?" Asked the woman currently checking out the little girl's arm and shoulder.

"Dr. Tate. And while you get points for advocating for the tiny human, don't act like the Head of Orthopedics doesn't know what she's doing," Dr. Robbins snapped.

They went to the scrub room, I went into the OR.

The little girl had no idea what was going on around her, and she was now crying so hard she was hyperventilating.

"Hey, kiddo, it's going to be okay. I promise. Dr. Robbins and Dr. Torres, they're the best. And Dr. Shepherd is gonna make your head feel better okay? And I'll stay right here."

Doctor Shepherd, Torres, Robbins, and Grey walked in and started to get into position, with Shepherd and Grey working on her brain, Torres working on her arm, and Robbins monitoring everything. The anesthesiologist put the child under, the four other surgeons started to work, but I kept holding her hand until Dr. Torres demanded I scrub in and come over to suction. I was thrilled, of course, but I felt a guilty about breaking the promise.

Dr. Robbins didn't just let me just suction, though, she kept me involved- quizzed me like crazy over bone structures, what normal vitals looked like, showed me what was going on as Callie fixed the girl's arm and Shepherd and Lexie fixed her brain bleed. She seemed impressed by me; I did not answer a single question wrong. What did she expect, for me to be a complete idiot? I wasn't top of my class at Johns Hopkins for nothing.

Although at first the girl's outlook didn't look good, somehow, amazingly, even though the girl's arm was mangled, the brachial artery had stayed intact. Callie said the chances that she could save the arm were good, but it would take a lot of physical therapy and high doses of antibiotics to fight the probable infections. The brain bleed was tricky, but Dr. Robbins pointed out to me what Dr. Grey and Shepherd were doing, and it looked good. Near the end, I noticed something terrible.

"Dr. Robbins? Sorry to interrupt. But... are those puncture wounds teeth marks?"

Torres, Robbins, Grey, and Shepherd all looked at me and then at girl's inner forearm, which a nurse had just cleaned off so Dr. Sloan (who I had just been informed was probably the best plastic surgeon in the country) could fix her up with little to no scarring.

Finally, Dr. Shepherd said grimly what we all knew. "This little girl... was mauled by a dog."

Twelve hours later, we emerged from surgery victorious. Unless if she caught a post-op infection, she would be just fine.

"Dr. Grey? What do you want me to do now?" I asked her as we peeled off our gloves, surgical caps, gowns, and masks.

"Actually, Dr. Tate, you will be on my service until she is discharged," said Dr. Robbins with a smile. "You advocated for her, she trusts you, and if this is what we think it is..." she grimaced. "She's going to want you to be around her. Welcome to PEDs."

I was sixteen hours into my first forty-eight hour shift. I helped save a girl's life today, Dr. Robbins had said. Now, I needed to wait for this girl to wake up, to see if she would talk about what happened to her. There were no missing child reports, and even if there was, we didn't even know her name. That was my job now, to find out what I could from her, to let her believe she was going to be okay.

"Hey, your name is Ally, right?" said a voice from the doorway. Raegan, the only other intern I had really gotten to socialize with, was at the door. Behind here were two men, Eckerton and Ridge. One was tall, with short, icky colored brown hair but bright blue eyes. The other was of medium height with shaggy, dark blonde hair, warm brown eyes, and a cocky expression. This one was holding a burger and fries.

"Hey, we ate earlier, but when we heard you got out of surgery, we brought you this. If you don't like it, James can eat it, and we'll get you something else..." He didn't need to continue as I ripped the burger out of his hands, tore the wrapper off, and began to wolf it down. "Or, we can go get you another one."

I chewed and swallowed, then with an embarrassed grin, said, "Thanks! I'm sorry... I didn't realize how hungry you get standing and having questions fired at you for twelve hours straight. My name is Ally Tate, what's yours?"

The blonde haired boy was Adam Ridge, the brown haired boy was James Eckerton. I found out quickly why they had brought me food; they wanted me to tell them all about the surgery. I told them everything, in as much detail as I could. Though I knew they were my competitors, they also would be working alongside me to save lives. I knew that most of the interns didn't think along those lines. But seeing what I saw in the OR this morning and afternoon, I couldn't help but learn one of the most important lessons in surgery and in life; that working together would yield better results than going it alone. Dr. Robbins, though she was, as she said, a 'tiny human' doctor, could not have saved the little girl alone. She needed Shepherd, Grey, and Torres. And then she needed Sloan to make sure this girl would not have scars when she was ninety.

"Dr. Tate?" All four of us whipped around at the sound of a little voice.

I flew to her side and held her hand, internally cursing myself. I had promised her I wouldn't leave, and she had woken up and seen I had not been there holding her hand. But apparently, she didn't think the same.

"You didn't leave." Tears began to well up in her eyes.

"No, I didn't," I said honestly. Besides a bathroom break on the way back from the OR to the PEDs ICU, the little girl hadn't been out of my sight. "Sweetie, can you tell me your name?"

"I'm not supposed to say it," she said immediately.

"It's okay, you can trust me," I said immediately. Her eyes darted to Adam, Raegan, and James. I nodded, knowing what she was thinking. "Maybe if Drs. Eckerton, Ridge, and Ellison left the room, it'd make it better?" I asked, turning to them with an apologetic expression on my face. They didn't look angry as they left, which I was grateful for. I could tell already that I would like working with them. "Page Robbins," I added as they left. Raegan gave me a thumbs up.

"Emma..." she said in barely more than a whisper.

"Emma, that's such a pretty name," I smiled.

"Don't say it out loud!" She screamed, and started to cry. "My daddy said that it's a bad name for a bad girl, and I'm not allowed to say it..." she trailed off as she started to shake.

I dropped my voice to a whisper. "Did your daddy do this to you?"

She just kept shaking and crying. I had an idea. "Emma, I can help you. Do you know what doctor-patient confidentiality is?"

She shook her little head, her blond hair going everywhere.

"It means that no matter what you tell me, I won't tell your mommy or daddy. Okay? You're completely safe here."

She seemed to think about it for a few seconds. "I don't have a mommy. Daddy said I killed her... she named me. So I'm a bad girl, and he never said my name after she died, ever."

"Do you know how your mommy died?" I asked with a gentle voice. My heart was hammering. Murder cover up, or jerk for a dad? Definitely jerk for a dad for telling her she was a bad girl and basically stripping her of her name, but... murderer?

"Daddy said I was such a bad girl, her heart stopped," she cried out. "After that, he got mean dogs... and he said he'd rather have dogs than me." Being very careful of her left arm, which was in a sling and cast, I put my arm around her little shoulders. She froze and jumped away from me so fast, she would have fallen off the bed if the railing on the left side wasn't up. Even so, she banged her bad arm on the railing and cried out in pain.

"Hey! It's okay! I promise I will not hurt you," I said quickly. "Your daddy is wrong," I added, looking into those electric blue eyes. "People's hearts stop for a lot of reasons. But a reason wasn't because you were a bad girl, okay? I'm a doctor, and I promise that wasn't the reason."

She started to try to wipe her nose with her good hand, but before she could, I wiped it with a tissue. She flinched a little, but relaxed as she realized that I was only helping her get the snot off of her face.

"What's your daddy's name?" I asked, in what I hope was a casual voice. It was obvious now that the bastard had abused her, and I wanted him to rot in jail.

"Daddy," the girl said with such confidence that it made me laugh. She laughed too because she saw me laugh, and after a second, she relaxed and lay back on her pillows. "Dr. Tate? My head and my arm hurts."

"That's because..." I knew that I had a choice between being completely honest and terrifying her, or bending the truth a little bit. "Do you remember what happened to you to make you hurt?"

She nodded. "Daddy wanted Rosco to fight another doggy, but they needed someone in the cage to be the judge, so he asked me to," she said with confidence.

My heart rate quickened. That complete asshole was putting his daughter in a cage during a dogfight!?

"That's my kid you're talking to." Growled a male voice that made my blood go cold.


	2. Chapter 2

_My heart rate quickened. That complete asshole was putting his daughter in a cage during a dogfight!?_

_"That's my kid you're talking to." Growled a male voice that made my blood go cold. _

I spun around and faced the man. He was bald except for a disgusting scruffy beard, a greasy white cut-off t-shirt, and ragged jeans. Nothing about him said that this was a father to a little girl. Everything about him screamed, 'criminal!'. And the way he looked at Emma... it was like she was a burden, like her getting mauled by a dog was such a damn inconvenience to _him._

I fought to keep my voice calm as he walked towards Emma's bed. "Sir, you're going to need to come with me. Your daughter was badly injured_"

The man sneered as I moved closer to the bed. "I don't care. She's fixed now, they found her, picked her up, and now I'm here to take her home. Let's go, you four-year-old brat."

Before I could stop him, he grabbed Emma and turned to run. She screamed in pain as the IV was ripped out of her good arm and her idiot father jostled her recently reattached left arm.

"CALL SECURITY!" I yelled to no one in particular as I sprinted after him. Just as he was reaching the stairs, a fist shot out of nowhere and clocked him in the side of the throat. He dropped Emma and grabbed his throat as a second punch nailed him in the side of the head, instantly knocking him out cold. Just before he would have landed on Emma, I snatched her up, careful of her bad arm, but still I held her as tightly as I could. She buried her face in my shoulder and started crying.

"Hey, pretty girl, it's okay. You're okay. Everything is going to be okay," I tried to sooth her, but my voice was cracking with the stress.

"Are you alright?" I just noticed- someone had their hand on my back.

I looked up to see James- he was the one who had punched out Emma's dad- and then realized two security guys snapping handcuffs on Emma's dad's limp form. "Yeah, but I need to get her back into bed."

"Do you need anything?" James asked as we walked back towards her room. "She's probably hungry, she can't have eaten anything all day, and breakfast is still about seven hours away for her. Besides, hospital food stinks. I think she could use some ice cream." I felt Emma's head shift and look at James warily. "Do you want some ice cream?" James asked as he leaned down so Emma was looking down at him, not the other way around. I felt her nod. "Okay then, pretty little girl, I'll go find Dr. Robbins and tell her what happened, and that you were such a good girl and to see if you can have some ice cream, okay? Do you want chocolate?" She shook her head. "Strawberry?" Nothing, and then she nodded. James smiled. "Strawberry is my favorite too. I'll be back soon, okay?"

She turned her face back into my shoulder. I smiled at James and mouthed, '_Thank you'_. He grinned and nodded back.

I took Emma back to her room, gave her a new IV, which she didn't like but didn't cry, either. After reattaching her heart monitor, I gave her a smile. "Okay, Emma, I need to look at your arm and head, okay? I want to make sure it's still as awesome as the rest of you." She nodded. I was starting to get a little worried that she wasn't talking.

I had paged Dr. Torres and Dr. Shepherd to make sure her father's brutal handling of her hadn't messed anything up, but from what I saw, everything was okay. Both of them and Dr. Robbins burst in just as I finished reapplying bandages. They all checked her over, declared her completely fine, and were trying to get her to talk just as James came back with a cup of coffee and strawberry ice cream.

"Dr. Eckerton brought you some ice cream!" said Dr. Robbins with a huge smile that Emma hesitantly returned. "Do you think we could take Dr. Tate and talk to her outside for a few minutes while you eat it? Dr. Eckerton will be right here the whole time," said, her smiling starting to fade a little as Emma began to shake her head.

"Hey hey hey, It's okay Emma," I said quickly. "Dr. Eckerton is awesome, almost as awesome as you. And I'll be right outside, you can see me through the window! That'll be okay, right?"

After a second of thinking about it, she nodded. James gave her the ice cream, and I followed the three attendings outside.

"What the hell happened, Tate?" Demanded Torres.

I took a deep breath. "I was talking to her, trying to get her to open up. I found out her name, it's Emma. Her mom died of a heart problem, her dad told her it was because Emma was 'such a bad girl, her mom's heart stopped'," I said, barely able to keep the anger out of my voice. "She was talking about how she hurt her arm when he came in. Apparently, she was being a 'referee' in a freaking _dog fight_." I spit out the last two words. Shepherd, Torres, and Robbins all looked at me with horror in their eyes. "That was when he came in, informed me I was talking to his daughter, said he didn't care she was hurt, and he was taking her home. Her IV was ripped out_"

"I'm going to go check it, hang on," interjected Dr. Robbins quickly. I watched as she rolled into Emma's room on her Heelys and examined the IV site. She wasn't long at all, and she rolled back out, looking impressed. "Was that the first time you started an IV on a tiny human?" she asked. I nodded, feeling slightly scared. "That was a great IV. Beginners luck maybe, but great work. I'm sorry, continue."

"Her IV and heart monitor became detached, and he ran with her towards the stairs. James punched him in the throat, causing him to drop Emma. James punched him again to knock him out, and then I picked up Emma. I told a nurse to page you guys, security came, I calmed Emma down, and took her back to her room, reattached the heart monitor, started an IV, checked her shoulder and head for bleeding, and now you're here."

They all looked at me. "Holy crap, that's probably the first time an intern didn't panic, followed hospital protocol to a key, and made the right decisions," said Dr. Torres. "Good job." Dr. Shepherd echoed the sentiments and then the two of them left.

Dr. Robbins took a deep breath. "Thank you, so much, for everything tonight. Just remember not to get too attached, okay? Child services will be down in the morning. Emma isn't out of the woods yet, so you're going to stay here tonight. Monitor her." She took another deep breath and continued, "Emma has multiple signs of child abuse. On her scans, she had badly healed fractures only a few months old and old bruising on her body. This poor girl is your patient now, all right? She's your responsibility. If she codes, if she dies, it's on you. So you make sure you're paying attention," she snapped. I was surprised, what indication did I give that I wasn't going to pay attention? But I guess she was used to dealing with stupid interns. "Tomorrow, I want you on my service, and I'm really going to test your medical skills," she said adamantly. "Good night, Dr. Tate."

I entered Emma's room, where she and James were talking animatedly about candy. I had to smile. Emma was telling James how Ring Pops were the 'best ever'. With a laugh, I told her, "Emma, if you're a good girl, tomorrow after dinner I'll bring you one. How's that?"

She nodded and smiled sleepily, her half-eaten ice cream abandoned on the side table.

James handed me the Styrofoam coffee cup. "Here, I brought you this. The rest of us are crashing. Adam and Raegen passed out on some gurneys in a storage area. It's a cappuccino, sorry, I didn't know what type you liked."

"A cappuccino is fine, thanks," I smiled and dropped my voice to a whisper. "Thanks for punching out Emma's dad."

"Anytime," he said. "If you need anything, food or whatever, just send me a text. I'm guessing you're staying in her room tonight."

"You guessed right. Here, give me your phone." I put my number in it and text myself. "There you go. Go get some sleep, you look like you're about to pass out."

"It is nearly two in the morning," he said tiredly.

"Oh, dang, wow. I'm going to try to get Emma to sleep. See you tomorrow."

I turned back toward Emma. I could tell she was sleeping, but she was fighting it. "Dr. Tate?" she asked. "Is my daddy going to come back and take me away?"

My heart broke at the fear in her voice. No one should be afraid of their parents. "You're safe here," I told her earnestly. "No one can hurt you in this hospital, okay?" I started to stroke her soft blonde hair a little bit. It seemed to calm her down.

"Okay," she mumbled, and finally the fatigue and painkillers pulled her under. I couldn't even attempt to keep the sad look off of my face now. That poor kid. To be so young, and to be so hurt and mistrusting... I was going to make sure this kid went to a stellar foster family.

I woke up a few hours later to the sound of whimpering. It took me a few seconds to realize where I was, but once I did, I jumped up from the arm chair and ran to Emma's bedside. I realized she was having a nightmare. Gently, I shook her awake. The first thing she did while awake was scream.

"Shhh, it's okay, it's just a bad dream, you're here, you're safe." I grabbed her hand, but she pulled it away from me and started crying.

"I don't want to go back to sleep," she sobbed. "I hurt everywhere. My daddy's going to hurt me more because I'm a bad girl. I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to be awake. Why doesn't God love me?"

"It's okay. I'm right here," I promised as I hit the call button. I didn't try to touch her again; she was too worked up now. I wasn't really the religious type, but I knew that if there was a God out there, he loved this little girl. "Emma, God loves you so much. That's why he sent you to this hospital, where Dr. Robbins, Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Torres and I are going to make you feel a lot better," I said just as Emma's night nurse ran into the room.

"Dr. Tate, what do you need, what's wrong?"

"Emma had a nightmare and is in pain right now, is there anything...?"

"Of course, right away."

A few minutes later, the nurse returned with a syringe filled with a sedative, and I pushed it into the IV.

Emma fought sleep for a few minutes, but soon, the painkillers won. I stroked the hair out of her face.

"You're different from the other surgeons," the nurse said.

"Probably because I'm an intern," I said. "I'm not actually a surgeon yet."

"You helped Dr. Torres, Robbins, and Shepherd operate on this beautiful little girl today. You're a surgeon. But most interns are blood thirsty. You aren't. Also, you're polite to nurses. That's a good difference."

"Maybe I'm not cut out for a surgeon, then, if I'm so different." I closed my eyes. I was so tired. It was almost five in the morning.

"Dr. Tate... It's a good difference."

"Call me Ally, please."

"My name is Kim Chase. You're going to be a good doctor. You'll see." she clapped me on the back and left.

The next morning went by fairly quickly. Emma woke up, ate some breakfast, and was contentedly watching cartoons before I left. I rounded on Dr. Robbins' patients; after Kim had left, I had gotten their charts and memorized the while making sure Emma slept soundly. There were four patients that I would be helping Dr. Robbins with over the next few days. They were her short term patients; apparently, Dr. Robbins only wanted me around long enough until Emma was discharged into foster care. That was fine by me; PEDs was interesting and intense.

The patients that I were assisting with was Ross, a twelve year old boy with appendicitis; he would need an appendectomy. Paige, a thirteen-year-old with a shattered femur. Hailey, an infant with a chiari malformation, and Riley, an eight-year-old who needed her tonsils out.

I ran blood cultures, tissue samples, and basically did scut for Dr. Robbins all morning, but it was different than I thought it would be. Instead of being meaningless, boring grunt work like it was supposed to be, I knew it was helping my patients. The tiny humans.

After rounds and scut work, Dr. Robbins seemed pleased with me. "You are really something else for an intern, you know that? You act more like a second-year resident."

"I've spent a lot of time in hospitals, Dr. Robbins. I kinda learned how to do a bunch of procedures as a kid. Sister had Leukemia," I explained quickly. "She died when she was sixteen. I don't want to get into it."

"Understandable. But since you've done such a phenomenal job so far, how would you feel like doing your first solo surgery?"

My head snapped up. "What?"

She laughed. "Ross needs an appendectomy, you've done an incredible job so far. You can have your intern friend scrub in with you. You and Eckerton saved Emma from being abused more than she was. I don't doubt her father would have killed her, had he gotten Emma off hospital grounds. Congratulations, Dr. Tate." She smiled and wheeled off on her Heelys. I ran to find James.

I found him, surprisingly, with Emma. He had two wrapped sandwiches, a six-pack of Cokes, and a bag of chips. Emma was eating her lunch of mac n cheese, a fruit cup, carrots, and a sherbert cup. She and James were watching Scooby-Doo.

"Hey, Emma, how're we feeling?"

She turned to me and smiled. "Great! Me and Dr. James are watching Scooby-Dooby-Doo! Dr. James is eating lunch with me, but not exactly 'cause he wanted to wait for you."

James blushed a deep red. "I knew that you'd probably spend your lunch hour in here, and passing out wouldn't impress Robbins, so I brought you some food."

"Hey, thanks," I said earnestly. "I really need to start paying you for this."

James shook his head. "No, that's fine_"

"'Cause it's a date, right, Dr. James?" asked Emma with a huge grin. Man, that kid knew exactly how uncomfortable she was making the two of us feel.

"Dr. James? And It's not a date, because I am going to pay him, Emma_"

"Eckerton is kind of hard for her to say. And no, really, it's on me_"

"With a surgery." I grinned at James.

James stared at me. "What?"

"Robbins is giving me a solo surgery appendectomy. She said I can have you scrub in with me!"

"Oh my god, I love you!"

James and I stared at each other. Emma stared at the TV, laughing as Scooby stole Shaggy's sandwich. "Um..." He started to stutter.

I grinned. "How about we have a celebratory drink together, if the surgery goes off without a hitch?"

"Hey, I want in on a drink and a surgery!" I turned and laughed as Adam and Raegen walked into the room, holding a bunch of balloons and a few sandwiches. "How're you feeling, Emma?"

"Good, you got me balloons?" Shrieked Emma happily.

Raegen, Adam, James, and I ate lunch with Emma and laughed at Scooby-Doo with her. We only had about fifteen minutes though, because Adam and Raegen were paged to the clinic and James and I had to prep for surgery.

We hit the books in the library hard. I knew how to do the surgery already, we had studied common procedures in med school, and this one was pretty easy, but I wanted to make sure I performed it flawlessly. James looked up the possible complications and how to fix them while I brushed up on the finer points and practiced stitches on a banana. By the time 15:00 (or 3:00 PM) rolled around, we were ready, standing in the OR, with the patient between us.

We were ready.


	3. Chapter 3

"The pathophysiology and progressive timeline of acute appendicitis is attributed to luminal obstruction causing distension, ineffective venous and lymphatic drainage, bacterial invasion, and, finally, perforation with associated leakage of contents into the peritoneal cavity," I rattled off to Dr. Robbins- and basically all of the residents, attendings, and interns of Seattle Grace Mercy West, who seemed to all be seated in the gallery, making bets on if I would panic and fail during surgery.

"Very good. Dr. Tate... this is your OR," she said.

I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "Scalpel."

I made the cut in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen, separated the abdominal muscles, and opened the cavity. Sure enough, this boy had a very angry appendix. "Okay, now I'm going to suture off the appendix before removal," I said calmly. This didn't seem too difficult...

Apparently the universe just loved proving me wrong, because as soon as I started to finish the last suture needed to tie off the appendix, it burst.

"Son of a_" I cursed while James began suctioning like crazy.

"What do you do now, Tate?" Asked Dr. Robbins, but James and I had already jumped into action.

"James, suction like your life depends on it- I can finish this off and help you- afterwards, we need to clean out the abdomen with saline, and as we close we should insert a tube to help with fluid drainage, if necessary," I said as fast as I can, hurriedly finishing off the sutures while James suctioned. Ten seconds after it burst, I cut out the appendix, put it in the metal basin, and suctioned out the fluid caused by the burst appendix. Robbins was eerily silent, but I knew that could only be a good thing- she wouldn't let me kill a patient. We finished washing out the abdomen. Because James and I had worked so quickly, we hadn't needed the tube. This would speed up Ross's recovery exponentially. I turned to Dr. Robbins. "Ready to close, Dr. Robbins."

She began to clap, slowly at first, and then faster as the entire OR and gallery applauded James and I. I knew my face was bright red, and I was thankful for the mask that was hiding the widest smile I had ever had spread across my face as I closed Ross's abdominal cavity. I had finished my first solo surgery.

I was back in Emma's room around dinner time. I have no idea why, but somehow her room had become me and my fellow intern's hangout. While she nibbled her chicken nuggets, broccoli, mashed potatoes, and eagerly awaited the Ring Pop I had promised her (I had gotten her a strawberry one ,since that was the flavor ice cream she liked) James, Adam, Raegen, and I gorged on burritos. Who knew that thirty-six hours on the job could make everyone so ravenous?

Just as I was swallowing the last bits of a deliciously greasy chicken burrito and downing the dregs of my vanilla latte, Dr. Robbins came it. It was the first time I hadn't seen her with a smile. It was also the first time I had seen her _not_ roll into a patient's room on her Heelys.

"Dr. Tate, can you come out here, please?" She asked, looking quite serious.

I jumped up. "Of course," I replied and I followed her out into the hallway. I turned around to Emma before I left. "Emma, make sure you eat all of your chicken nuggets _before _you open your Ring Pop! Don't be a little rascal," I told her with a smile before shutting the door behind me. "Dr. Robbins, did I do something wrong? Is Ross okay?" I asked, her horrified expression unnerving me.

"Ally..."

Oh, crap. Doctors never used your first name unless there was really bad news.

"_What's going on_?"

"The police went to Emma's house. That bastard didn't even give her a bed. She had a _towel_. And her clothes? We didn't realize it at the time, there was so much blood, but those were the only clothes she had. This could possibly be the worst abuse case that Seattle has seen in years."

My heart stopped. "No." I turned looked through the glass, where Emma was intently looking at me, waiting for me to come back. "She's just a little girl... she's four, for Christ's sake."

"I know... you've seen a really filthy part of pediatrics. It's not always like this. But Ally... the reason why I'm telling you this is that she will not let any of us examine her for evidence of physical or..." Robbins took a deep breath. "Sexual abuse." She noticed that I was clenching my fists. "Easy, Ally. Looking panicked and angry is not going to help Emma. You need to control your emotions." I worked to control my face. A few seconds later, I had relaxed it. "Good. Now, don't look all scary again, but I need to you try and examine Emma. She's too scared of any of us, and us forcing her is going to make the situation a heck of a whole lot worse when we're trying to get her to trust people again."

I took a deep breath. "Okay. Get Raegen, James, and Adam out here and explain. Please. I can't..."

Dr. Robbins nodded.

I walked back out of the room about a half hour later. "A lot of scars. Cigarette burns, scars and fresh. Bruises older than the mauling incident. She's really skinny. Malnourished. Not surprising, considering she's underweight and undersized. No sign of sexual abuse at all, thank God," I said as I showed Dr. Robbins the pictures I had taken.

"I can't believe this..." She murmured. "This kid isn't going anywhere for at least three months. She's got to have a psych consult... she's got to_"

"We've got to testify against him, don't we? Emma's pathetic excuse for a father."

"Jerry Polik," spat out Dr. Robbins. "And yes. As the Head of Pediatrics here, I will be making sure he's put away for life. Now you go back in there and let her know everything is okay. Spend the night there again. She trusts you. If she has nightmares again, do not sedate her- I know last night you did, but the more she avoids it the more it's going to be repressed and she'll be effected. I don't care if you'd rather be waiting for a trauma in the pit. Get back in there. Now." She spun and left.

I walked back in feeling a bit nettled. I didn't mind this at all. I had helped perform the surgery on Emma; she was my patient. It was that simple.

We watched some more Scooby Doo on TV and I taught her how to play Tic-Tac-Toe, which I would purposely lose. Around nine, Emma was obviously getting tired, but like last night, she fought sleep. This time, I knew what to do. "Come here," I said, and I carefully picked her up and sat down in the rocking armchair with her. For a few minutes, she was extremely tense. She didn't like being touched, I figured, since I was sure since her mom died all she knew was any physical tough meant pain.

"This... feels good." She mumbled into my shoulder as I rocked back and forth.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I whispered back. "I promise."

It took me almost an hour to get her to sleep. If I moved or shifted at all when she was almost asleep, she would instantly wake and tense up. I was glad she couldn't see my face with her head buried in my shoulder, because I was so angry.

As soon as I was sure Emma was in a deep sleep, I situated her in her bed and pulled the covers over her. Then, before I could break down, I slipped outside. I stood there for a couple minutes, trying just to breathe. I needed some coffee or something.

Apparently, it was a slow night at the hospital, because just as I thought about my need for coffee, Raegen came out of the elevator, holding a drink container with two cups and a bunch of file folders. I looked at her.

And then I exploded.

"Who the hell could do this to a little girl! Her father beat her, starved her, neglected her, and let dogs use her as a damn chew toy! What type of father- no, person- would do this!" I ranted, pacing back and forth in front of Emma's room. "I swear to god, I hate people sometimes, I mean seriously, who_"

"_Ally,_" Raegen said firmly, putting the coffee down and grabbing me by my shoulders. "Sometimes, people are just plain evil. You helped save her life. Now you're going to help her get better, and she'll go into a foster home and maybe get adopted and have another chance at life!"

"People shouldn't have kids if they don't want them," I burst out. "My sister- my parents wanted her. And she died anyways. It's not fair."

Raegen's expression turned into a pitying one. The expression I hated.

"Ally, I am so sorry_"

"Don't be. It's what got me through med school, it's what got me here. She's the reason I became a doctor. I want to keep people from feeling the pain my brother, parents, and myself felt when she died. It's just not freaking fair."

Raegen pulled me into a hug.

"I'm sorry, I don't even know you, I just_"

"Shut up. It's okay. Trust me, it terrifies me too." She released me, and I wiped my tears off my face. "I'll go back in there with you."

I picked up the folders she had been carrying. "What're these?"

She rolled her eyes. "Grey's charts. Meredith Grey's. I swear, they act like we're complete incompetent idiots."

I laughed as she picked up the drink container and held her hand out for the charts. "No, I'll help you with them. But yeah, Robbins keeps acting like it's an inconvenience for me to be in here. It's not, obviously. Emma's my patient. At least we aren't like the interns who sliced each other open, did you hear about that? One of the night nurses told me."

She laughed. "Yeah, I heard it was our resident's class. I didn't think Lexie would be _that_ stupid. She seems pretty sane."

"Are you kidding? The resident and attending surgeons here are all completely mad underneath the surface. But I think that's what makes them such great doctors. Now the Grey sisters, yeah they're insane. I heard Meredith put her hand in a body cavity that contained a bomb, just to keep her patient's heart from bleeding out. Oh and get this! Dr. Yang, one of the cardio fellows, kept operating even when a guy that was shooting up the hospital put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her."

"You chased after a crazy guy who was trying to kidnap his daughter and James punched him out."

"Good point. We fit right in!"

It took Raegen and I a couple minutes before we could stop laughing enough to go into Emma's room without waking her. I could tell, that in this crazy place, where doctors put themselves at risk for their patients, you stayed awake for 48 hours straight, gouged on bad hospital cafeteria food, and still wouldn't trade this for anything, Raegen was going to be one of my best friends. I'd been here for less than two days. I loved it here.

James, Adam, Raegen, and I sat on the bench in the interns lockerroom. Our first shift was done. We had survived, none of us had killed anyone, and we had all seen the inside of an OR. We had all helped save lives. The past two days, we were truly doctors. But none of us had words. We sat on the bench, mentally and physically spent, as the other interns in the program talked and shouted around us, we were silent, only wanting the next twenty-four hours to go by quickly so we could start our next 48 hour shift.

Finally, Adam broke the silence. "Anyone up for dinner a drink or two tonight at the bar across the street?" He glanced at me. "We could go see Emma, first."

I grinned, and soon Adam, James, and Raegen were mirroring me. "She wrapped us all around her finger, didn't she." We all started laughing. "I'll make sure to grab some more Ring Pops. That little shit."


	4. Chapter 4

As usual, I picked up my coffee and James's from coffee cart girl Felicia Stewart, who pushed me into taking a free muffin. She did this with James, Adam, and Raegan too; she liked our intern class for some reason. She said we had spunk, which I kind of agreed with.

We had been here at Seattle Grace Mercy West for over a month. Now, after dozens of sleepless nights, tears, sweat, and plenty of caffeine, we knew how to do multiple different types of sutures, put in a chest tube, incubate someone, think under pressure, and had seen amazing surgeries performed by the attendings and residents. I knew they liked us, although they called us imbeciles and mocked us and acted like we were too dumb to walk and breathe at the same time. We were fast learners, didn't complain, didn't beg, and didn't show weakness. And besides that, we were caretakers of a little girl that had every resident and attending surgeon wrapped around her finger.

Emma was doing phenomenally well with physical therapy for her arm. Dr. Torres said that she'd be lucky to have full control of her arm after a year. But after just a month, she threw a baseball with such force that James slightly jammed a finger catching it and had to recover before doing any procedures.

Mentally, on the other hand, she was suffering, and it killed everyone to see it. She had nightmares every night and refused to go to sleep at all unless either Adam, James, Raegan, or I stayed in the room that night and rocked her to sleep. When the nightmares woke her, whoever stayed would then have to repeat the rocking process again, and most of the time she woke up multiple times a night. And even then, sometimes, if I wasn't the one in the room with her, she would refuse to go back to sleep. Under Dr. Robbins' and the child psychologist,Dr. Leorn's orders, Emma was not to be drugged to be forced back to sleep. As a result, I would be paged in, and I would get her to go back to sleep, but she's never told me or any of us what the nightmares were about. We were getting worried; the psychologist seemed to have no effect whatsoever. And although I tried not to think about it, the last two thoughts I usually had before sleep was one: What had that man done to her? And two: Would she ever fully recover?

I brought James's coffee to Emma's room, where I was met by a sight that I had to just stop and smile when I saw it. It appeared James had fallen asleep rocking Emma, and both were currently still sleeping in the rocking chair. I couldn't help it; I knew that it was probably against the rules, but I snapped a picture with my iPhone before gently shaking James awake.

When he realized he had fallen asleep rocking her, he looked startled, but then smiled at me sheepishly.

"Morning, Sleeping Beauty," I whispered as he carefully put Emma down on the hospital bed and slid the railing back into place. "No nightmares?"

"None at all," he said with a smile. I shared it completely; this was a first since her second night here, when I had first rocked her to sleep.

"We're on Hunt's service today," I said, still whispering as I checked Emma's vitals with him, but now this was just routine; she was almost completely healthy, besides an infection left over from the dog bite. She had gained weight, the bruises had disappeared, and Sloan had done a hell of a job on all of the bites and cuts; there was virtually no scarring.

"Hunt's crazy. He'll probably shoot one of us and then expect us to save a life."

I laughed at James's joke. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. "Let's go. Don't want to wake the birthday princess up."

James and I met up with Raegan and Adam in the intern's lockerroom. The four of us were so close, that instead of saying "page Lexie's interns" they would say "page the Core Four." And that was completely fine with us. Raegan and I were constantly being referred to as a 'happy Meredith Grey' and a 'nice Christina Yang'. This actually annoyed us a lot, because it made Yang and Grey dislike us. We'd done a lot of scut work for them because of this.

But today, we weren't doing scut, we were on Dr. Hunt's service in the pit, waiting for a trauma. I liked Dr. Hunt. He was constantly forcing us to think outside the box, forcing us to be innovative and think faster than we would have otherwise. After we had on trauma gowns, Hunt assembled us and a different group of interns that we hadn't actually met yet, as they had been on a completely difference service than us with Dr. Jo Wilson, who was a first-year resident.

"Today, you work in two teams. I will be judging you on several things, none of which I will be telling you. Obviously; do not kill anyone, do not let your pride get in the way of your patient's care. Teams: Core Four, and then you guys: Dracon, Yate, Valent, and Armstrong. Whoever wins will be the top choice for us attendings to assist in surgeries; the losers will be doing scut until further notice. Now, get out there and wait for a trauma!"

As I was running out there with the other seven interns, I overheard Sloan saying to Hunt, "You really think this is fair? The Core Four is awesome. Of course they're awesome. My girlfriend's teaching them!"

Twenty minutes later, a trauma came in. Or rather, two traumas. Two friends, both seventeen years of age, brutal car accident; the idiots tried taking a turn at eighty miles an hour and flipped their car. I heard one of the 'other' interns yelling, "Which one has a better chance of survival?"

I loved trash talking. It's the reason why I got kicked out of most of my soccer games in high school. "Okay, coward, you can be one of those doctors who only try to save the easy ones!" A paramedic jumped out and started spitting out, "Jonas Walker, seventeen years old, flew through the windshield and was found 50 meters from the car. He's circling the drain, we've lost the pulse in the field, haven't regained it; you should call time of death_"

"No, we're taking him in and doing everything we can to try to save him_ we're doctors," James said adamantly. The four of us ran with the gurney into Trauma Room Four with one of the paramedics on the gurney as well, administering CPR. Once there, he hopped off and Adam continued it while Raegan readied the paddles. "Clear!"

Adam hopped off, and Raegan shocked the boy.

Nothing. Still flat lined. "Push epi. Clear!"

What seemed like years later, but was only five more shocks, his heart started and his pulse and BP were stable. It kind of pissed me off that Hunt was just standing there, watching, with a perplexed expression on his face. Odds are the patient had suffered some brain damage from being oxygen deprived for so long, but right now, we had bigger problems. The four of us started to do damage control as quickly as possible, with James giving him O neg to replace all of the blood he had lost, Adam and Raegan trying to control bleeding, and myself trying to assess injuries so we could page the attending and then get him in the imaging machine. Primarily I noticed that he had a severe head injury, most likely from going through the windshield, and he had multiple open fractures. From impact with the ground, I guessed he had internal bleeding that would need to be dealt with right away. "Prep an OR and page Shepherd, Torres, and Meredith Grey right now to that OR, we'll meet them up there after scans!"

Dr. Hunt finally spoke. "Tate, you don't even know what_"

"Open fractures are for sure, I can see bone, sir! I can see skull through this laceration on his scalp, and it looks pushed in. Look at his abdomen; you don't get regular bruises from flying through a windshield and landing on pavement, you get it from internal bleeding, which will need a general surgeon to fix!"

Hunt nodded. "Let's hope you're not wasting their time then, intern, because if you are, then odds are other patients are suffering for it."

Five minutes later, the scan was complete- and I had been right about my assessment, plus a few more things that would have been impossible to detect without the scan. Ruptured spleen, internal bleeding, needed a shunt to relieve ICP, and most of the bones on the right side of his body were shattered. It was a miracle we revived him in the ER.

"Good work, Core Four, get him to the OR!" As we were running towards the elevator with the gurney, keeping one eye on the monitors to make sure nothing else went wrong, I saw the other interns working on this guy's brother. It had been about fifteen minutes from drop off to now, and they hadn't even been to scans yet.

"Dr. Hunt," I yelled. "Can I go help them?"

He looked amused. "Switching sides to give you a better chance since this patient is circling the drain, Tate?"

"No, sir, but this patient's recovery will be stunted if his brother dies!"

Hunt just looked at me for a second. "Go."

"Where's Tate?" asked Torres with a frown as the interns scrubbed in and prepared to assist. "Wasn't she the one that called what was wrong with him and paged us even before the scans? Sounds like she earned the right to be here," she said, even though all the residents and attendings currently knew about the competition going on. Which made it even stranger that she didn't come to assist. Unless she stayed in the ER to wait for another patient, which made sense in spirit of the competition, but who would give up a trauma this incredible? She was probably off to see Emma again. Callie had told Arizona a million times that Tate was too attached, but Arizona had adamantly said it was necessary for an abuse victim to have a confident, and Emma had chosen Tate.

"James's girlfriend stayed to help the other team. They weren't doing too hot," smirked Dr. Kepner, who had just scrubbed in to help with the trauma of internal bleeding.

"She is not_"

"Shut up, intern."

It pained me to give up the opportunity to see and possibly help perform such an interesting procedure, but the other team literally sucked at their job. The only good one was Valent, who was the only one keeping calm, but even then, her skills were lacking.

"You guys need help?" I asked as I entered the room, pulling on fresh gloves.

"No," snapped all four of them.

I gave a laugh as Yate was trying to figure out why his heart monitor wasn't strong. "Seems like you guys are confused, is all."

"Oh, the hell with it," snapped Valent. "We can't beat them anyway, the attendings love them too much." She turned to me with a panicked expression on her face. "We're waiting for Altman or Yang, we need a consult now, we paged them 911. It's weird, we controlled the bleeding, breath sounds are good, his BP is stable and his brainwaves strong, but this heart monitor_"

I answered for her. "It won't really pick up his heartbeat."

She nodded. "What do you think? Collapsed ventricle? I have no idea, Yang and Altman are going to yell at us_"

"Have any of you ever learned about situs inversustotalis?"

"His internal organs are reversed? It doesn't say that in his chart though," Dracon said with a sneer.

I gave a cocky half smile. "Move the electrodes as if his heart is on the right side, we'll see who's right."

Half a minute later, after Valent corrected Dracon's sloppy inversion, a healthy heart rate showed up on the screen.

Yang came running into the room. "Did you morons kill someone? Why was I paged 911?" She said irritably until she saw the monitors displaying a healthy heart rate and a completely stable-seeming patient.

"This man has situs inversus totalis, we wanted you to check his heart to make sure nothing was damaged because this is such a rare condition," I explained quickly. Dr. Yang was not one to piss off this early in the morning. Even if they were my competitors, I didn't want them being called morons for what was a very difficult syndrome to diagnose.

She finished listening to his heart. "His heart is in good shape. Who diagnosed him?"

The other interns looked at me. She observed me coldly. "Are you the happy Meredith Grey or the nice Christina Yang?"

I looked at her just as coldly. "Neither. I'm Ally Tate."

She looked taken aback. "You morons, go take this patient to get his scans. Ally Tate, come with me."

I gulped. My smart comment had crossed a line with her, and I was about to get reamed.

We walked out of the trauma room, left the ER, and took the elevator to the surgical floor. We stopped outside the door leading to the gallery of OR Six.

"Do you actually want to be a surgeon?"

I nodded. "Yeah, of course!"

She shook her head. "No, you don't. Because if you did, then you would be inside that OR learning everything you can.

I started telling her how to do the procedures that Grey, Shepherd, Kepner, and Torres, would be performing and she stopped me.

"Have you ever seen any of those performed before?"

"The shunt, yes, by Dr. Lexie Grey. The rest, no, only on video."

"I get that you wanted to help those morons, Tate. Hunt told me you went in that room because they were struggling and you saw. Which is weird. Because most of the time, surgical interns are cutthroat and brutal. But you aren't. And it may make you a great doctor and not an asshole, but it is going to make you a shitty surgeon if you don't get your ass in the OR and watch and assist in these procedures. You have potential. I don't tell interns that, ever, so you know what a big deal that is, and if you tell anyone I said that I will deny it and make you do scut for a month. But you need to get your ass in that gallery and watch it be done. Now. Never bow out of a surgery like this again. This program is not about being nice. It's about learning how to be a surgeon."

I nodded, feeling shocked. Christina Yang was cold, demanding, and the most intimidating of attendings, but she told me I had potential. However, I distinctly heard her mutter 'moron' as the gallery door closed behind me. In the OR, Jonas Walker was crashing.

"What's wrong, Dr. Ally?" Emma demanded of me as I walked in, even though I was trying hard to hide it.

"Nothing, kiddo, I'm just a little tired," I answered with a smile, even though it was forced. An hour ago, Jonas Walker had gotten out of surgery. He hadn't woken up yet. Everyone was worried he was brain dead. "Happy birthday! Sorry I didn't say it earlier, I didn't want to wake you up," I explained.

Her expression changed from looking concerned to looking confused. It was entertaining to see how her emotions always were splayed on her face. She would be awful at poker, because she couldn't lie at all. The other week she had tried to tell me she had eaten all of her broccoli, but then she had let out a huge giggle and I had asked her where she had hidden it. She had unwillingly glanced under her pillow, and I had smirked and pulled it out.

"What's going through that pretty little head of yours?" I asked, tweaking her nose, which made her giggle. After what she'd been through, every laugh and smile completely made my day.

But then she frowned. "I don't have a birthday."

"Of course you do. Everyone has a birthday!"

She shook her head. Only good little girls do. Not me."

I felt my teeth clench in anger. Despite our best efforts, Emma still had it in her mind that she was 'bad' when really she was polite, well-behaved, and in our opinion, too quiet for a four-year-old; well, now five-year-old. We saw little bits of the girl she would have been without the abuse sometimes; like when one of us would bring her a ring pop, or we took her to the new park on a balcony off the Peds floor. She would get really excited and yell in glee, but then look around like her was afraid that we were going to hurt her for it. Like she wasn't allowed to be happy.

"Emma," I said quietly. "Today is October fifth. You were born five years ago today, so today you are five years old. In a little bit, James, Raegan, Adam, and maybe a few other doctors are going to be here and we're going to celebrate it with you, because the day you were born was a very happy day for everyone. Okay?" I smiled.

She thought about it, and finally nodded her head.

Scooby-Doo was her favorite show, so we watched an episode before I got a text from James: **_We're coming. J. Walker is awake and talking! :D_**

I let out a laugh of exhilaration just as James, Raegan, and Adam walked into the room, shouting "Happy Birthday!" Adam was holding a cake that Raegan had made, which was vanilla cake with pink strawberry frosting, while James was holding the presents for Emma. Raegan was holding birthday hats for everyone. When I made a face, she stuck her tongue out at me and whispered, "Emma likes them, look!" for she was already reaching for one.

While we were all eating cake, Dr. Robbins wheeled in to join us. Her eyes lit up like the four of ours were as she saw Emma happily laughing and taking and acting just like any five year old. "Happy birthday, Emma!" She sang out. "I hope you haven't been eating too much sugar," she said, shooting a look at the four of us.

Emma let out a high pitched giggled, which of course meant she had. Dr. Robbins cracked up as she took the piece of cake offered to her by Raegan and sat down. "What are those?" Emma asked, gesturing to the boxes that James had carried in. I knew she had been wanting to ask since they had walked in.

"They're presents for you, silly," I smiled and handed her the box from me.

She seemed confused and tentative as she took the box. I tore a little bit of the wrapping paper off, as if to let her know it was okay. Her smile got huge, and soon the cardboard box was revealed. I opened it for her and then with a scared face, she reached inside.

"SCOOBY!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, causing everyone to crack up.

After she got over her excitement of the stuffed animal Scooby-Doo, she reached back into the box to pull out Scooby-Doo pajamas, which she immediately wanted Dr. Robbins and I to help her put on. She also received a few different outfits from Raegan (hers had been cut off from the ER and she had been wearing hospital pajamas ever since) and Uno, Old Maid, checkers, and a Yo-Yo from Adam. Her eyes were huge as she opened the last present, the one from James. It was all of the seasons from Scooby-Doo. Tomorrow, James was going to bring in an old DVD player and hook it up to her hospital TV.

We could tell she was getting tired as she smiled and hugged Scooby. "Thank you," she smiled widely. "This was the best birthday ever."

I smiled at that, but inside I was upset. Her best birthday ever should have happened with her parents taking her to the zoo, or the amusement park, but instead it was in a hospital bed, surrounded by doctors, as she was from terrible injuries no child should ever sustain.

She reached her arms out to me, and I was shocked; normally, she hated people touching her and would tense up, even after a month. As Adam, Raegan, and James picked up the garbage from our little party and left, Emma fell asleep as she clutched her stuffed dog and I rocked her.

After putting Emma to bed, I was paged with the other interns to the lockerroom. Dr. Hunt was waiting there to address the eight of us.

"Today, I saw extraordinary things out of you four," he said, pointing at us. "And not-so-extraordinary things out of you four," he said, gesturing to the other four interns. "I am not happy. We shouldn't have two groups of interns with such drastically different skill levels. Brush up. Be better. You're not going to make it in this program otherwise. Congratulations Core Four, you've escaped doing scut."

We stayed put in the lockerroom while Hunt left and the other interns stormed off. "YES!" Adam said suddenly, throwing his hands in the air. "We did it!"

We were laughing, shouting, celebrating. Suddenly, James turned around and kissed me.

It felt... incredible. I hadn't realized how much I had wanted him to until he did. Ignoring the fact Adam and Raegan were in the room, I deepened the kiss, parting my lips slightly, pressing myself against him.

And then we broke apart, with Adam and Raegan looking at us with huge grins on their faces and James looking mortified. "I_ I'm sorry," he muttered, and quickly left the lockerroom.


	5. Chapter 5

Early the next morning, after my shift had completed, I returned to my small one-bedroom apartment just across from the hospital and lay face down on my bed without even taking my street clothes off. I still felt shocked. Because honestly, even though I had worked with James for a month and if I had to pick someone to team up with from the Core Four it would be him, I didn't know if I liked him like that, even though that kiss had been amazing.

I had given up on dating in undergraduate, when I realized how demanding becoming a surgeon would be, and that was fine with me. One night stands worked well enough to satisfy my sex life. I could wait until I had finished my residency and was an attending to start a family, if I decided I wanted one.

Would dating James be okay? Part of me wanted to say yes- we were on the same schedule as surgeons, and if one of us got called into the hospital or blew the other off for surgery, the other wouldn't get angry because odds are the next day the other person would do the exact same thing. But what if things went wrong, and our relationship ended on bad terms? I didn't want to lose James as a friend. With a groan, I rolled to my side, got my iPhone out of my pocket, and called Raegan.

It only rang once before she answered.

"What's going on?" she demanded, sounding panicked. The mark of a intern right there. Odds are, if a fellow surgeon is calling you ten minutes after getting off your shift, someone is dying.

"Nothing, nothing!" I quickly reassured her. "I just wanted to... you know... talk."

I heard her groan into the phone. "Eckerton is head over heels for you, he has been since the first day, everyone can see it, and everyone can see how good you two would be together."

"How do you know?" I demanded.

"The attendings and residents have been calling you Eckerton's girlfriend when you're not around for at least three weeks," she informed me. "Can I go to sleep now?"

I laughed. Raegan was awesome most of the time, but when she was sleep deprived, she turned into a total witch. "Goodnight." I put my phone down as I heard the line going dead.

I rolled onto my back, closed my eyes, and gave into the fatigue the 48 hour shift had left me with.

I woke up a little after 6 PM, still feeling dog-tired. That was the problem with working 48 hours and then getting 24 hours off. The only thing you wanted to do was sleep. I could have shut my eyes and slept for the next twelve hours until my alarm went off, but I was pretty hungry. With a groan, I got up, walked to the kitchen, and opened the drawer that had a multitude of take out menus. Normally, James, Adam, Raegan and I would all be hanging out right now, eating pizza, drinking, and watching ground-breaking surgeries on my crappy TV before one of us went to go spend the night with Emma, but since James had kissed me and everyone now felt awkward, no plans had been made. I shut the drawer. Suddenly, I wasn't that hungry anymore.

I had two choices, I knew. I could wait until James got over being awkward so our friendship could go back to normal, or I could go talk to him about it so he could get over it faster.

There was only one option an impatient person such as myself could go for. I walked back into my bedroom and grabbed my phone.

James Eckerton was lying on his bed, eyes shut tight, trying to force himself to go to sleep. He'd been in this position since getting back from the hospital. How could he have been such a moron? He had liked Ally for awhile now, ever since he had laid eyes on her, actually. And sometimes, he could swear that she liked him, too. James had planned this whole thing, asking Ally out, taking her to dinner somewhere, eventually making her his girlfriend... but he had completely blown it. Now, she just thought he was some tool who ran around kissing a bunch of girls.

His landline phone started to ring.

"Hello?"

For whatever reason, my heart started to race as I heard his voice. It wasn't his normal voice though; it sounded tired and dead. I hoped I hadn't woke him up. "Hey, it's Ally."

For a second I worried he had hung up. "Hey..." he said, sounding wary.

"I was wondering... would you like to come over for dinner tonight?" The words were out before I even had a chance to proccess what would happen if he said yes.

I could almost hear his smile as he exclaimed, "Yeah! Sure! What time?"

I was suddenly grinning so widely that my chapped lips split. "Eight sound good?"

He gave an exhilarated laugh. "Sounds good. Should I bring anything?"

"A strong stomach. I'm terrible at cooking. If worst come to worse, we'll order Chinese."

He laughed again. "See you then!"

I hung up, now feeling like a complete idiot. I couldn't cook! I had an hour and a half to make a meal that didn't taste terrible, and somehow I didn't think boxed mac n' cheese or Ramen noodles were what James had in mind. With a sigh, I opened my fridge, and realized that all I had in there was two bottles of tequila, a few containers of yogurt, and half a gallon of milk. Damn. I was going to have to run to the store.

After getting back, I looked at the ingredients I had bought, the recipe, and the stove and shook my head. I had an hour to do this. Oh, man... this was going to be interesting. I turned on the clock radio to listen to some music. At least I could have some fun while cooking.

The chopped salad was ready, the chicken had grilled nicely on my never-used countertop George Foreman, the garlic bread was in the oven, the water was boiling, the jarred sauce was in the pan, and the dessert was in the fridge. But it was the spices and vegetables that were destroying me. I had no idea what to put in there! I had bought a variety, figuring that I needed some in my kitchen anyway, but something told me taco seasoning wouldn't taste good in spaghetti sauce.

With a shrug and a 'screw it', I chucked in some garlic powder, sweet onion powder, and mushrooms. I knew James liked mushrooms, because he always insisted on getting them on the pizza and Raegan complained about it.

I checked the time. It was a quarter to eight. With unpracticed hands, I broke the noodles in half over the pot and then added some olive oil to keep the noodles from sticking together, like Google had said. At five til, I drained the noodles, and then the song "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black-Eyed Peas came on. I couldn't help singing as I put the salads on the table, then went to serve the chicken parmesan.

**I know that we'll have a ball  
If we get down  
And go out  
And just loose it all**

I feel stressed out  
I wanna let it go  
Lets go way out spaced out  
And loosing all control

Taking out two plates (I cursed myself, because they were plastic), I put a generous helping of noodles on both, a grilled chicken breast on top of the noodles, coated it in the marinara sauce, and then covered it with parmesan cheese. I frowned. It didn't look like the picture on Google images, but it was close enough. I glanced at the clock as I finished setting the table and as the song finished. It was exactly 8:00.

**I gotta feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night  
That tonight's gonna be a good night  
That tonight's gonna be a good good night**

"Me, too," came a quiet voice from the doorway.

I spun around and my jaw dropped open. I mentally commended myself for putting on a nice black dress instead of wearing just jeans and a t shirt, because James looked stunning.

He was wearing a dark suit with a grey button-up shirt, but no tie. I couldn't help but think about how the suit jacket almost looked tight on his broad, muscular shoulders.

He was looking at me nervously, and I realized I hadn't said anything yet. He began to stutter. "Sorry... I knocked, but I heard the music and figured you couldn't hear me over that, so I let myself in."

I smiled at him and turned off the radio. "That's fine, come on in. Dinner's ready."

He handed me a bottle of wine that he must have pulled out of either his freezer or he had just bought it at the liquor store down the street, because it was ice cold. "Merlot is pretty good, I don't know if you like wine or not... I've only ever seen you drink tequila," he said with a nervous laugh.

I laughed at his nervousness. We had virtually spent every day together for the past month, inside and outside the hospital. True, we had never been alone like this... "Merlot is great, thanks. Do you want to eat now?"

For the first time, he took his eyes off of me and looked at the table. I cursed myself for not buying a candle or something like dates are supposed to have. "Wow! I didn't know you could cook."

I laughed a little bit. "I can't. I Googled how to make this."

James pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit. I only hesitated for a moment before allowing it. "It looks fantastic." He grabbed two wine glasses from the cupboard (I had never used them, they had just come with the glassware set I had bought) and poured the Merlot for us. James handed me a glass, sat down, and lifted his own glass. "To Google, for without it this meal would have been difficult to construct, and to the extraordinary woman who followed the recipe flawlessly," he toasted, stuttering a bit near the end.

I clinked, my glass against his, hoping he didn't see me blushing.

I watched his face as he took his first bite. "Oh, man, this is great!" James exclaimed, seeming surprised, which I suppose he should be after the fifth time I burned popcorn last time he, Raegan, and Adam were over.

I took a bite as well, and I also marveled over the fact it didn't taste burnt and undercooked at the same time.

"Like seriously, this tastes better than my mom's cooking," He exclaimed.

I cocked my head. Out of all the things that we had talked about, family had never come up. "So, your mom cooks a lot?"

He nodded. "They live in northern California. It's where I'm from. I went to school at Cal-Berkeley. My mom's a stay at home mom. My dad's an biomechanical engineer. What about your parents?" he asked.

I should have known this was coming. I should never have invited him over here, should have never let anyone get closer than an acquaintance. "They're dead," I said bluntly and coldly. "They were crack heads and I don't even remember them. They died and I was bounced around from foster home to foster home until I got adopted. I was this rich old couple's midlife crisis kid. I don't think I've ever had an actual conversation with them."

James looked mortified. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

I shrugged. "It's fine. They paid for med school. At least I got out."

He nodded, and we ate in silence for awhile. Then, he asked a question that caused me to spray wine everywhere. "Have you thought about adopting Emma?"

After mopping the wine up off the table, I shook my head. "She deserves a family. Not some single parent in an apartment who's never going to be around.

James shrugged. "Sorry, you're right. I was just wondering because you seem to care about her a lot.

"It's called patient care, James," I snapped. "I care about all of my patients."

"You're right, I'm sorry," he said quickly.

I sighed. This wasn't going right at all. I took another gulp of wine. "Tell me more about your family," I said in a politer tone.

I found out that he was an only child, but had about a million cousins, aunts, and uncles. His parents hadn't wanted him to come out here to Seattle, but he had insisted. Besides the rain, he liked it a lot better. His whole entire family lived within a fifteen minute radius of his house, and it could get pretty hectic; they had family get togethers pretty much every weekend.

As we finished the last of our chicken parmesan, he had started telling a funny story that involved his cousin Matt and a stray dog he had hidden in his room for a month without his aunt and uncle finding out. The wine was still almost full. I couldn't believe how easy it was to talk to him about things other than medicine. By the time we had finished the chocolate pudding I had made, the bottle was empty and both of us were a little tipsy. We moved to the living room to continue our conversation, both with a margarita- turns out James makes fantastic ones. As I started to tell a story, he leaned forwards and kissed me. This time, when I deepened it, he didn't stop. It appeared he didn't mind chapped lips.

My alarm was going off. With a groan, I rolled over to throw the damn thing across the room. But before I could fully roll over, I bumped into someone. With a flash, I remembered what had happened last night. Then I realized I was still naked.

"James!" I hissed, elbowing him with more force necessary to wake him up.

He reached out and shut off my screeching phone, then smiled up at me. "Hey." He reached up and touched my face. On impulse, I bent down and kissed him. He ended it, and I frowned, wondering what was wrong. "We have to go to work," he said, laughing as he saw my pouty face.

We went straight to the hospital from my apartment, James wearing the slacks and shirt he had worn the night before. After we changed into scrubs and grabbed coffee and muffins from Felicia Stewart, I hurried to Emma's room to check on her before rounds. I was curious as to if she had had a nightmare tonight.

Raegan was in Emma's room. "No nightmares," she announced with a grin. "Adam said she hadn't had any last night, either. We can probably stop doing this soon."

"Great," I said with a smile. Then I rushed out, "Raegan, last night James and I_"

She started laughing. "I knew it! Adam owes me twenty dollars.

"You guys bet on us!?"

"You betcha." Raegan gave me a smug grin.

"You little_"

"Good morning, Dr. Ally and Dr. Raegan!" said Emma sleepily.

I smiled at her. "Good morning, kiddo." I turned back to Raegan and was about to tell her I wanted a cut of this bet but before I could, a middle-aged woman dressed in a pants suit entered the room, followed by Dr. Robbins.

"Jane, this is Dr. Ally Tate and Dr. Raegan Ellison," said Dr. Robbins. "They've been aiding Emma with feeling better up here-" she tapped her head "-as well as medically."

"Hi, Miss Jane!" Sang Emma happily.

"Emma, tomorrow Miss Jane is going to take you to your new family, okay?" Dr. Robbins said.

I whipped around. "What?"

"Medically, and psychologically, she's ready to go into foster care," said Dr. Robbins, watching me carefully. I knew it was because she thought I had gotten too attached. I took a deep breath. "That's great!"

Emma seemed happy. It wasn't my place to want to give her a life where she would have a single mom who would rarely be around.

But if it wasn't my place, then why did I suddenly feel like punching a wall?


	6. Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Of course. Of course Emma was going to go into foster care. What had I expected? I supposed I had hoped she would end up being adopted, but five was too old. I knew that from experience.

I had been adopted when I was eight, an unlucky development in my life. The only good part that had come from it was that at least I had no loans from medical school. My 'parents' hated me, and the only thing that had kept me going was the Hedger's other midlife crisis child- my little sister by two years, Holly.

Holly was truly adorable, from what I can remember. She had blonde hair and brown eyes and was the only good thing about my life for the sixteen years she was alive. She was the reason I was adopted in the first place; my adoptive parents never let me forget that. She was head cheerleader; I was a troublemaker. She was well on track to go to Harvard; I didn't even want to go to college. Nine years ago, she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Eight years ago, she died. It was then I vowed to become a doctor.

"Ally?" came James's voice from around the corner. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said in a tone that didn't match my words.

"Are you sure? I know you_"

"Drop it, James!" I snapped.

His face showed hurt, and then he shook his head. "No. You don't get to do that. You don't get to push away your friends just because you're angry."

I shook my head. "I don't want to talk about it. Let's get to work."

The day dragged on. I stitched people up in the ER most of the morning and afternoon without a break until Lexie told me to go get some food.

Normally we had been eating in Emma's room, but Robbins told us to stay out of there from now on. We weren't even supposed to say goodbye to her. Robbins didn't want her making a spectacle in front of her foster parents tomorrow morning, not wanting to leave us. As a result, I was now slumped on a gurney in what looked like a storage corridor, trying to pick at a salad that was half-wilted. Before long, Adam, Raegan, and James had showed up with food. We were silent for awhile

Finally, James spoke. "I'm really going to miss that kid," he said.

Raegan nodded fervently. "Yeah, she was cute. At least she's going to have a better life now."

I snorted. Raegan clearly had no idea what went on in foster care.

"Kind of makes you want kids of your own," James remarked off-handedly.

Adam jumped up, leaving his food, and walked off. "I'll go get him," I muttered, abandoning my gross salad.

Adam moved fast, and it took me awhile to fully track him. I finally found him on the roof, sitting behind the helicopter pad. "What's up?" I asked him.

He just shook his head. I saw, with a horrible jolt, that he was crying. I completely sucked at dealing with emotional problems. I was about to turn around and head back down the stairs when he took a deep breath and said dully, "I was going to have a kid."

I was not expecting that. "What?"

"Yeah. She would have been born in today... if my wife hadn't died in June," he choked out. "She was walking home from work, late, after parent-teacher conferences. She taught kindergarten back in Louisville. The house was a little over a quarter mile away. She... she never came home. Her body was found in a dumpster two days later. She'd been murdered."

My face was frozen. "Oh my God, Adam, I'm so_"

"Don't say it," he snapped. "Don't say you're so sorry for my loss."HHHH;kjsdisfhsbskdbfkdjdi]]

We watched the bustle of traffic down on the street below for a few minutes, not saying anything, as tears fell down Adam's face. I tried to think of something to say.

"James, Raegan you and I are a family, you know," I told him finally. "We're all a little messed up... there's no parents or kids. No one is married. But we're family. I love you guys. And Adam... it's terrible what you've had happened to you. And I don't pretend that I know your wife. but Adam, she wouldn't have wanted you to never move on. I don't know if you're religious... but I personally believe that God rewards those who suffers with eternal life. Your baby... your wife... they're up there. Your wife is taking care of your baby, and God is taking care of them. Adam... James, Raegan, and I will take care of you. Let us."

He started to choke over his words. "I... I've never talked about it before here... I wanted to get away. I miss her so much... the bad fights, the good times, the long drives, the car rides... I haven't even talked to my parents in months. I haven't talked to anyone, really, in months. No one's ever put it like that before..." I hugged him tightly as he hugged me. "Thank you, Ally," he said quietly.

"Adam, I'm here for you."

"Just... don't tell anyone. Not yet."

The next few weeks sucked. That's putting it lightly.

I was upset about Emma, Adam was upset about his dead wife and child, James was upset that I was upset, and Raegan was so obviously falling for Adam it made everyone uncomfortable, most of all me, who knew that Adam was not ready for any relationship. The only person who didn't notice was Adam.

The four of us had medical skills that were contesting even third and fourth year residents now; instead of dwelling in our personal matters, we threw ourselves into work. The attendings and residents started calling us robots.

But nothing helps bring up peoples' mood more than a bunch of sugar on Halloween... along with the surgeries that came from bad Halloween pranks. That's what Adam, Raegan, James, the 'other' interns, and I were waiting for when the ultimate trauma came into the ER.

Dr. Hunt and Dr. Sloan came rushing by, throwing on trauma gowns, gloves, and masks as they went. Nothing unusual, for the Head of Trauma and the Head of Plastics to be waiting in the ambulance bay. But two seconds after they were out the doors leading to the ambulance bay, a herd of attendings and residents- including our resident- also rushed by.

"Dr. Grey!" I yelled. "How can we help?"

"You guys, man the pit! We've got this," Hunt yelled back.

I exchanged an eye roll with Raegan. The trauma of the night was about to come through those doors and of course we were going to be stuck doing menial tasks.

For the next hour, we dutifully took care of the minimal injury ER patients while over a dozen burn victims came through the door. Apparently, an arsonist had lit an apartment building on fire. Seven adults and four kids had terrible burns over their body. The rest were minor, and those were the ones taken care of by us. After reassuring the mom of an uninjured three year old her toddler was completely fine (for the fourth time), I looked around and realized the ER was almost completely empty. The major burn traumas had all been admitted or taken to the OR to fix their incredible injuries. We weren't busy. At all. Jamie and Sam were playing a game of Uno at the nurses station. Adam was absentmindedly playing a game on his iPhone. Jessica and Paul had just went on a coffee run for themselves and Jamie and Sam. James had gone on one a coffee run for myself, Raegan (who was in the bathroom) and Adam. We were still two clearly divided groups, even though their surgical skills had improved slightly.

I was about to go and politely ask to join Jamie and Sam's game of Uno when the trauma of the night came through the door.

A blonde-haired, blue-eyed, _bleeding _young man came stumbling through the ER doors. He had a knife in the left side of his chest. It was visible through his fingers; his hands were clasped around the handle. He had been stabbed multiple other times as well, but in his abdominal region. "Help me... please," he whimpered, before falling onto the ER floor.

It was almost like we had rehearsed for this. Jamie and I immediately lunged forward to catch the patient; Adam and Sam helped him onto a gurney. Jamie barked out orders for them to get meds and supplies while I checked out the wound. I could tell from the position that it had punctured his heart; probably the right atrium. He was going to need surgery.

"Can you tell me your name or if you have any medical allergies?" I asked, quickly trying to assess what I could by his appearance. Caucasian and no older than fourteen or fifteen years old were about as much as I could deduce.

"Jacob Grant," he barely whispered. "No... no allergies."

Raegan, who had just returned from the bathroom, heard his name and immediately looked him up in the database as I stuck a heart monitor on Jacob. She plugged his name into her hospital-issued Microsoft Surface tablet and started rattling off information. "Jacob Grant. Born in this hospital. Thirteen years old, only medical history being a broken arm at age ten from falling out of a tree. No medicine or food allergies."

"Dr... I... I started the fire. It was my fault. Friends dared..." As far as I knew, there was only one fire in Seattle tonight. And he smelled like soot.

Just as he finished confessing, he flatlined. "Shit!" I yelled, immediately starting CPR.

"He's bleeding out. We've got to open him up, now! Tell an OR we're on our way! Page Altman!" Jamie yelled, getting the paddles ready.

A nurse responded right away. "She's in emergency surgery, all the ORs are booked, I'll tell them to finish up as soon as they can and then to_"

"He's not going to make it that far! Son of a_" James, who had just gotten back from the coffee run, cursed. "Get him in the trauma room. Now. Get sterile drapes, incubate him, get him ready to have his chest cracked. We don't have another choice."

Raegan and I cleared, Jamie shocked him, and his heart started again; but it was barely there. His blood pressure was nearly nonexistent. He was bleeding out.

"Who's done the most cardio?" I asked as Adam incubated and Sam started his IV and hooked him up to O neg. As soon as they were finished, James and Paul began to move the gurney and Raegan, Jamie, Jessica and I began draping the room and putting on gowns, masks, and surgical caps.

"I have," Adam shouted as he finishing incubating him. He had to manually squeeze the bag; we didn't have a ventilator down here. "Altman requests me on her service all the time."

I waited for someone to argue, and sure enough, Jessica snapped, "No, I've got this_"

"Jessica, either shut up or get out of the room, Adam's the best we've got right now," barked Jamie.

"Jamie, you and I are on damage control, we're opening his stomach and packing him until the attendings can take a look. Adam, fix his heart. James, anesthesia, you're probably the best here at math. According to the bed scale he weighs 62 kilos. Jessica, take over for Adam on the manual bagging. Paul, Sam, Raegan, monitor, suction, irrigation, you know. Let's do this. We don't have any room for mistakes!" I said. I knew that this was probably extremely illegal, what we were doing. But I also knew we had no other choice.

Two and a half into his surgery, Hunt and Altman stormed in. Adam was unflinching. Jamie and I were finishing up on his abdomen. His wounds were fairly simple, so we had just repaired the damage instead of packing him.

"Tate, Ridge, Valent, what's the patient's status?" Asked Hunt, who sounded oddly calm. I assume he didn't want us to start panicking.

"The patient is now stable, Dr. Hunt. He had multiple stab wounds in his abdomen and one in his chest, with the knife left inside him. It punctured his right ventricle, which I repaired. I was waiting for an attending to check my work. Ally and Jamie are about to close his abdomen, and we'll be all set. He'll be fine, but need a high dose of antibiotics due to the large chance of infection he now has, since we operated in an unsterile environment, sir," Adam answered.

"Let me see that heart," Dr. Altman snapped. I held my breath while she observed Adam's work and Hunt observed my and Jamie's repairs. "You got lucky, Ridge," Altman finally said. This repair will do. Owen and I will close him up. Dracon, stay to continue manual ventilation."

"Go clean up and wait for me in the intern's lockerroom. None of you will see an OR until further notice. This was incredibly dangerous and stupid. Go."

Silently, we left the room.

"Those damn interns," growled Dr. Altman. "They're insane. One of these days, they are going to kill somebody!"

The eight of us were slumped around the interns lockeroom. We knew that we had messed up, badly. But somehow, we weren't two groups anymore. Paul was on one side of me and Jamie was on the other, instead of two groups divided on each side of the room. I wasn't sure how it had happened. But somehow, saving Jacob Grant's life had made us a team.

Meanwhile, in the conference room adjoining the Chief's office, the attendings were meeting to discuss the intern's going rogue.

"I've never seen anything like it," Dr. Hunt said to the group, shocked. "They worked together... they weren't arguing over who got to make the cut or who did what. They acted as a team, they flew solo today, in their makeshift OR, without arguing without faltering once. I'm not sure if they're brave, smart, or just plain damn ignorant. It's terrible. They could have killed this kid. But they didn't. They did what they had to when we were all busy. We need to do better. We need to teach them better, to nurture them along. Somehow, the system got broken. We need to make it better."


	7. Mrs Eckerton

James and I were having breakfast together at my place. He had taken to practically living there, since it was closer to the hospital. He had made french toast with powdered sugar. It turned out that he was actually quite a good cook and I actually had food in my fridge now. Our mornings had routine, now; wake up at an ungodly hour. Go for a jog or a walk, come back, and take a shower. By the time I was out, James had breakfast ready and more importantly, coffee brewed. After breakfast, he would quickly shower while I did my hair and then we would leave. It was... too _easy. _I was waiting for everything to fall through. The sex was too good, the pattern felt too easy, we rarely rubbed shoulders, we never fought. Something had to go amiss, and sure enough, that dumb boy proved me right.

"Hey Ally," he started off with an excited grin as he slid another slice of French toast onto his plate. "Guess what."

"You're letting me have your awesome lobotomy today."

He laughed. "You wish. Shepherd specially requested me today. But anyway, my mom is coming into town this afternoon. She's going to be here for a few days. I'd like you to meet her."

I looked at him. "Why?"

He seemed taken aback. "She's my mom, you're my girlfriend, she wants to meet you."

"She _knows_ about me?" I couldn't help but sound appalled. I hadn't told anyone about James. As bad as that sounded, no one knew who he was to me except the people at the hospital. Not that my adoptive parents would care, but my old college friends that I was slowly losing touch with probably would.

"Of course! We're invited down to California for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rest of my family cant wait to meet you."

"I probably have to work." I said automatically. "If I didn't I would stay here for Thanksgiving. Alone. Like I have the last twenty-six Thanksgivings. I_ I have to go." With that, I jumped up, grabbed my jacket, keys, phone, and pager, and ran out the door, leaving a dumbfounded James behind.

"Raegan, Raegan, Raegan! We have an emergency!" I shouted as I burst into our storage room we always slept in. We used to sleep in a hallway that had a bunch of unused gurneys, but Dr. Karev, Grey, and Yang kicked us out. They had been kicked out of the attendings lounge for drinking all of their coffee, so they needed their old hangout back. The storage room was better anyway; it had gurneys as well, and I had brought my old college mini-fridge and coffee pot in. It was actually a pretty sweet set up.

Raegan shot up out of bed and grabbed her pager. "Where?" she asked in a panic.

"James's mom is coming into town!"

Raegan groaned and flopped back down on the bed. "I thought someone was dying, Ally, you can't just do that!"

"This is a huge emergency!"

"Why?" she asked, clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation here.

"James came from the perfect family. Rich, California, basically the damn Brady bunch. I'm a crack baby who was some old couple's feel good charity case!" I ranted, pacing the room and wringing my hands.

"Oh my gosh, Ally, James isn't going to come out and say, 'Here Mom, meet my girlfriend. She has no family', he's going to say, 'Hey Mom, meet my super amazing _surgeon_ girlfriend."

I looked at her. "The truth is gonna come out eventually though. And James is totally a momma's boy. It's super annoying. He's all like, we're going to California for Thanksgiving and Christmas!"

"We probably have to work, what's he smoking? Because I want some. We're surgical interns, we don't get holidays."

"That's beside the point. You know the last time I had a real family holiday? With all the presents and happiness and good food? Never."

A few hours later, I had calmed down a little bit, or at least resigned myself for an uncomfortable couple of days. I was working with Lexie and Sloan on a facial reconstruction. They were actually going to let me do the ear flap rotation. I could tell there was something going on between the two of them, even without the rumors. Normally, Sloan was gruff and uncaring. but with Lexie, he was sweet and kind. It was a nice change from the normal Sloan.

As I was finishing up my portion of the surgery, Sloan cleared his throat. "Damn, Tate. Where'd you learn to do that so well?"

"Dr. Grey is excellent," I answered quietly. "She makes sure we know our skills well so we don't panic during surgery."

It was true. Dr. Grey spent a good deal of time giving us articles to read or showing sutures, preparing us. Chief Hunt had complimented her highly on her teaching skills, saying that she had probably been the best resident since Bailey in making sure that we knew our stuff. Personally, I thought he had only put her behind Bailey because Bailey would have killed him otherwise. I thought Lexie was excellent. At least she didn't neglect teaching so that we went and stitched each other up. That still made me laugh.

Life had been awesome until James had asked me to meet his freaking mother.

Raegan cornered James by the coffee cart. "Are you actually stupid?" she asked bluntly as he received his dark roast. "Because I honestly think you are."

He turned around and shot me a filthy glare. "If you're talking about Ally's and my _private_ conversation earlier, then I have to say it's none of your business."

"Cut the crap and pull the stick out of your ass. Ally's my best friend. Of course she's going to tell me when something is bothering her. You can't just throw her all of these family functions and then expect her to be completely fine!"

James shook his head. "What's the big deal about meeting my mother?"

Raegan rolled her eyes. "I don't know, besides that most women dread meeting the mother's of momma's boy spawns, maybe it's the fact that she _doesn't have one?_"

James stopped walking, turned around, and stared at Raegan, wide-eyed. "Shit."

"Shit is right, you moron. You'd better get a large vanilla latte for her."

I scrubbed out of surgery, feeling a lot better than earlier. I knew now I shouldn't have been so rude to James. It wasn't his fault that I got so weirded out about family functions. I needed to apologize, but also tell him why I felt uncomfortable.

Before I could even ponder where he was, James ran up to me with a large Styrofoam cup. "I'm so sorry, Ally, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I didn't think. I just want you to meet my family, you're important to me. I want you to know them, and like them. Please come to dinner with my mom and I tonight. My mom's going to love you_"

"James," I said quickly. He was starting to ramble. "I'm sorry I panicked. But I don't know anything about normal family dynamics."

He nodded forcefully. "I know. I'm sorry. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable."

"Then can you understand why I'm going to say no to dinner tonight?"

He looked crestfallen. My heart started to ache, seeing him like that. "That's fine."

"But..." he looked up. "What about lunch?"

His grin told me everything I needed to know.

"Ally, Ally, Ally!" Raegan screamed at the top of her lungs. I shot up off the gurney I was sleeping on, grabbed my pager and was halfway out the door before I realized that she was laughing. "Hah. How do you like it?" she snickered.

"You, ma'am, are a complete jerk," I grumbled. "I nearly just went into v-tech!"

"I need your advice," she admitted as we sat on the gurney and I started the coffee pot. It was the middle of the night, for Pete's sake. It about eight hours I was going to be eating lunch with James's mom. I needed my beauty sleep.

"What's up?"

"Adam," she said quietly. "I keep trying to make a move but... he keeps shying away. I'm starting to wonder if he's gay," she finished with a laugh.

I shook my head. This was going to be a difficult conversation. Betray Adam and console Raegan? Or keep Adam's secrets and let Raegan worry. "He isn't gay. But maybe you should focus on being friends first.

She groaned. "I have for like the last three months! I'm a woman with needs!"

I chuckled to myself. "Just invite him out for drinks at Joe's, or something. If you really are interested in him, and it's not just a crush, I think it'll be worth it. Be his friend first. He's a great guy."

I buckled myself into the BMW and tried not to panic too much. We were meeting Mrs. Eckerton at a diner not too far from the hospital, and I was about to have a complete panic attack. "James?" I asked quietly.

"What's up, Ally?" he asked.

"What's your middle name?"

He started laughing. "Why?"

"Just tell me. We've been dating now for two months and I don't know your middle name!"

A smile played on his lips. "James Matthew Eckerton. After my father. What's yours?"

I smiled. James Matthew had a nice ring to it. "Alexandria Tate is my full name. I don't have a middle one."

He took my hand and we finished the short drive to the diner. "Don't worry," He assured me as he opened the door for me and took my hand once again. "My mom is going to love you."

Mrs. Eckerton was already sitting down at a booth in the back. She was a stout woman with brunette hair and a kind face. "Jamie!" She exclaimed as she hugged James. Releasing him, she smiled at me. "This must be Ally. I've heard so much about you!" She disregarded my extended hand for a handshake and drew me into a hug.

I immediately stiffened on reflex, because it surprised me. I tried to recover it. " It's really nice to meet you, Mrs. Eckerton."

She laughed. "Mrs. Eckerton is my mother-in-law. Please, call me Laura."

I smiled, feeling a little more at ease. "Thanks, Laura. How was your drive?"

The conversation was fine until we ordered. "I'll have the bacon cheeseburger with everything on it with a side order of curly fries, please."

Laura looked at me like I ordered grilled kitten. "You're going to eat that?" she asked.

James saved me on that one. "We run every morning and Ally has a very fast metabolism," he said.

Laura nodded. "I suppose since you have to eat healthy at the office, you can eat some unhealthy things outside of work. Which branch of alternative medicine are you in, Ally?"

I looked at her like she had five heads. "Alternative medicine?"

"Yes, didn't you and James meet at his Holistic Practice?"

My heart began to race and I could feel my blood pressure rise. I looked at James. His eyes were pleading with me. "I was called there for a consult." I lied badly. I completely sucked at lying. "That's where we met. I'm a doctor."

"Oh, that's nice, which medical school did you go to?"

As soon as we were in his car, I turned to James. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!" I screamed.

"Ally, let me explain!"

"SHE THINKS YOU WORK IN HOLISTIC MEDICINE? DID YOU LIE TO HER ALL THROUGH MEDICAL SCHOOL?"

He looked sheepish. "Yes. But listen_"

"No! That is so wrong! Have you been lying to me, too?"

He shook his head. "I have never lied to you."

"Then why the hell are you lying to her!"

He took a deep breath. "Our family believes in holistic and homeopathic medicine. My would-be uncle died of side effects of a vaccine back when my mom was a kid. That's when they turned to alternative medicine. My dad knows I'm a surgeon. It'd kill my mom to know I was turning against her beliefs. I was going to tell her eventually..."

My anger was ebbing quickly. I couldn't stay mad at him. "You do know the holistic stuff is bullshit, right?"

He laughed. "Of course I do. I went to med school too, you know. I am going to tell her eventually, but I'll tell her I switched. Just... not now. Okay?"

I shook my head. "I'm not okay with this. But I respect that you don't want to hurt your mother. She's nice. I liked her."

He smiled and showed me his iPhone screen, where a message from his mom had just come in. It said

**Don't lose her. She's the best luck you've had!**

I laughed. "Let's get back to surgery."


	8. Where I Belong

**To clarify: this story is set in what would be season nine. However, certain events never happened (don't want to spoil the episodes for those who aren't caught up). **

"I can't believe they use alternative medicine. I mean, why the Hell did he become a surgeon?"

"Raegan! Let's stick with the real problem here. I can't believe he's been lying to his mom!"

"Oh, right." My friend was silent for awhile. "Seriously though... alternative medicine." she snorted.

It had been over a week since dinner with Mrs. Eckerton. I had avoided James ever since, as terrible as that sounded. He had told me all about his family... but had never once mentioned that his mother had no idea what he had gone to med school for. It was weird. I didn't want any part of it. I had already had enough of a screwed up family life, I didn't need to add another one to my history. I had been depressed since, so Raegan had taken me to Joe's to cheer me up, and she and I had been dishing it out for over an hour now over shots of Fireball. I had already had enough so I couldn't feel my face, and it was only a little after two in the afternoon. Oops.

"Raegan, I don't care that his family smears bat shit on their chests to get rid of the common cold," I finally snapped.

She stuck her tongue out at me. "You're just mad because your Dr. McDreamy turned out to be a_"

"McLiar," entered in a new voice grimly. "Move over, interns, so Mere and I can sit by each other."

Raegan and I didn't even have time to exchange perplexed glances before we both scrambled over a seat so they could sit. I ended up slipping off the bar stool. Meredith caught me before I could completely fall and gave me a grin. "Dumb boys giving you problems?" she asked.

"Well, the stress is from the dumb boy. The coordination problems..." I laughed as she helped me back on. "What about you?"

"Derek isn't giving me problems right now, I'm here to support Christina."

"We'll have two of whatever those morons got," Christina said sullenly to Joe, hitching her thumb at us.

He placed two shots in front of Meredith and Christina. I watched Meredith down it and gag. She glared at me. "Fireball!? You two are drinking whiskey? What is wrong with interns these days?"

I snickered a little at her indignant expression. "Well, it was about six years ago you two were in my position. Times have changed."

Christina groaned. "Yes. We're _old_. And apparently old me is supposed to have Owen's babies. I mean, I _just _ became an attending. How am I supposed to become a kickass Cardio God if I'm on... _maternity_ leave." She shuddered and downed both the shots at once. "Yeah, I definitely need tequila."

"Round on me," I said. Maybe me buying them drinks would make them like me better...

"Shit, Tate," Christina slurred about an hour later. "I didn't know you were a heavy weight."

I had matched Christina shot for shot and I was still fine. Meredith and Raegan were completely out of it, dancing to 'Hollaback Girl' which was now playing on the juke box.

"You'd be surprised at what you don't know about your minions," I laughed. "Drink with us more often, you'll figure it out."

She laughed. "As a general rule, I don't drink with interns. They normally can't handle their liquor... you're like the super intern or something. You and your clan... Christ, you and Eckerton did the intern appy successfully. You do know that surgery is set up to put interns in their place, right?"

I felt nauseous all of the sudden. I had been given that surgery because they wanted me to fail?

"But then you pulled it off. And you and Valent... you two are going to end up competing against each other. You act friendly now, but she'll undercut you if you're not careful. Watch your back, Tate."

I shrugged and looked around for more tequila. "I don't lose."

She laughed. "Atta girl. I hope you're the nice Christina Yang. Raegan ain't badass enough to be my reincarnation."

I suppose that was the highest compliment that I could have been given by her.

All of the sudden, I saw James burst into the bar. "Kill me," I muttered to Christina.

She turned clumsily and spotted James as well. "Over here, alternative boy," she called. Looking confused, James came over.

"Hey Ally, Dr. Yang," he said, nodding to us. He took my hand. "We're going home. Come on."

Christina grabbed my arm. "Tate's staying here, Eckerton. Get out of here. Go try to cure cancer by aligning a spine."

His face flushed red, and he turned to me. My brain seemed to be working at an eighth of the speed it usually did. "You're been telling everyone stuff about my personal life?" he asked me, furious. "Damn it, Ally. I trusted you." With his face showing nothing but hurt, he turned around and stormed out of the bar.

"James," I shouted, half-falling over. "James!"

An annoying beeping noise sounded over the music and drunken people. Christina sobered up, fast, as she looked at her pager. "We picked a shitty time to get wasted," she announced. "School bus crash. Get your stuff, intern. We've got to go get hooked up to banana bags and get sober, stat."

I lay flat on my back with my arm over my eyes. "How much longer until these things work," I groaned. Bailey had come by to scream at all of us, Lexie had come by to scream at Raegan and I, and to make things even worse, Owen, Adam, and Derek had come by, but James hadn't.

"Give it another hour or so," Meredith grumbled. She and Raegan were worse that Christina and I. Christina's BAC was already low enough to get back to work. As soon as mine dropped low enough, I was going to go assist her. _If _it ever dropped low enough.

"That's it!" I yelled. "I'm going to go find James."

"Just stop shouting, or else you're doing scut for a month," Meredith snapped.

I rolled off the ER bed, grabbed my banana bag, and walked out into the pure chaos that only a tragedy can cause. Parents were running everywhere, trying to find their children, while nurses tried to help both the parents, the patients, and the doctors. I had to blink a few times to fully take it all in, but that may have been because of the tequila.

I stumbled around, probably looking lost in my street clothes and banana bag. The street clothes kept me from being mobbed by parents, and the banana bag kept me from getting mobbed by doctors, so I was grateful.

Finally, after about a half hour of wandering around, I ran into James. Thankfully, I was just about sober. "Hey, asshole, get over here," I growled. I dragged him into an on call room.

"What." This one word was so cold, so unemotional, that it kind of took me off my anger a little. But not enough.

"You lied to your mom for months and then dragged me into it, you're lying not only about your job, but _my _job. This is the only thing I've done that I've ever been proud of. And you lied to her about it. So yeah, I'm going to rant to my friends."

He shook his head. "Since when are Yang and Grey your friends?"

"Since Yang bought me a shot about five hours ago."

He visibly grew angry. "I don't care if they bought you a whole damn bottle. If you have a problem with something, then tell me. You don't understand this because you don't _have_ a family_"

I immediately cut him off. "It's time to stand up to Mommy, James. Grow the hell up." With one last glare, I turned around and left the on call room. I felt hollow inside, empty. My banana bag was empty, and I went to find Adam so he could take my blood to confirm I was good to go back into the operating room, the only place in the world I belonged.

Christina was letting me do the final repair on the tricuspid valve when Arizona Robbins came in, looking white-faced and tired. I couldn't blame her; she and Owen were running this trauma. "Yang, I need Ally, as soon as possible."

She looked at Robbins. "I was about to let her do the final_"

"Yang, it's an emergency."

With a nod from her, I sped through scrubbing out, ripped off my soiled gown and mask, and met Robbins out in the hallway. "What's up?" I asked her. She just shook her head and took off towards the stairs. We took them two at a time to the Pediatric ICU. We rounded the corner, swiped in, went through to the trauma section, and I stopped cold.

Emma was in the bed, her leg bandaged with gauze. Her arm- the one that _wasn't_ injured by the dog attack- was in a pink cast that looked to be several weeks old. She was quiet, staring at the wall, not at all like the child that had went into foster care about six weeks ago. "Dr. Robbins..." I whispered. "What happened to her?"

"Open fracture of the femur. Callie fixed her. Her other arm... the fracture was weeks old. Meaning it happened in foster care, and she wasn't given treatment. There were other signs of abuse as well... she whispered back. I heard the pain in her voice. "She won't speak to any of us. We were hoping that you might get her to talk..."

I looked at her and felt something replace the numbness that had settled in when I walked away from James. Cold anger. "Yeah. You want me to get her to talk again, so you can send her straight back into foster care, where this whole cycle can start over again," I hissed. "I need to talk to Dr. Grey or Shepherd, now."

She looked at me, astounded. "Why them? Her case is pediatric-ortho..."

"I'm going to adopt her, and I need their help."

It was midnight. The school bus crash rush had finally come to an end. Total, there had been seventeen injuries, fourteen of them surgical, and then another six deaths. Raegan, Adam, the other four interns, and I were wolfing down some cheeseburgers from Joe's. James was suspiciously missing, and this hurt. Out of everyone, even though I wasn't his girlfriend anymore, I wanted him to know that I was going to adopt Emma. I had already talked to Derek and Meredith about it. They had been skeptical at first, since I wasn't married. But after explaining to them I had the funds to buy an actual house and that she had already so many injuries and psychological and physical traumas, they agreed a judge might be a little more willing.

The door to our storage room burst open. Speak of the devil. "Ally. I need to talk to you." His voice sounded nervous.

"Alright." I said, trying not to roll my eyes. He yelled at me about sharing our business with my friends, he basically just let five more people know unless Raegan had told Adam. Then it was only four more people.

I went outside to the hallway and looked at him.

It all came out in a mumbled rush. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I knew it was wrong, that's why I was so defensive, I told my mom that I was a surgeon, she's pissed, told me not to come home again, but I told her. And I told her that you were a surgeon too and I was so proud of my surgeon girlfriend. I'm so sorry. She cut me off financially. I don't care. I'm not living a lie anymore, I'm free." He looked at me, and he looked relieved. "I needed to do that a long time ago. I'm just sorry that it took you to tell her to stop controlling me."

I shook my head. "You did what? And she did what?"

"I told her that I was a surgeon, not some alternative medicine witch doctor, and she freaked and told me that if I was such a big shot, I could make it on my own and needed no financial assistance. She also told me not to come home for holidays. I'm not too fussed. Honestly... it wouldn't be much of a holiday without you. Allison Tate... I love you."

I looked at him. I tried to say it back. "I... I..." I couldn't say it. The only person who I have ever said I loved before was my sister. "I'm falling in love with you," I answered back. That was true. He continued to amaze me every day.

He grinned, picked me up, and spun me around. "So, I hear you're adopting Emma," he said with a grin. "That's great."

I smiled widely back. "Yes. I am. I'm going to sell my apartment, get a house. With a backyard and a pool and a swingset_"

"Move in with me."

I looked at him. "What?"

"I know we've only been dating for like six weeks... but I think we could do it. We basically live together anyway. Move in with me. I have a house... it's already paid for in my name, my parents can't take that away. With both our incomes, we can still pay the bills. We can support Emma together. Of course, I understand if you want to be the primary caregiver," he said quickly. "But please... move in with me."

I took a huge breathe, trying not to panic and run. "When's the earliest I can move my stuff over?"

Later, James and I were with Emma, trying to get her to talk. Nothing worked. When I told her that she might get to come stay with James and I for a little while, she smiled the tiniest smile that completely made my day. James and I shared a look of delight, and suddenly I realized- it wasn't just in the OR I belonged. Maybe... just maybe... I was getting a family.


End file.
